Saturday Seeds: Drake Baldwin makes roster, minor league injuries, Rays trade
Here's some of the relevant news from this week for the Atlanta Braves
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While the team doesn’t leave Florida until Sunday afternoon, the roster is set. Let’s catch up on some of the news of the week in another news roundup!
Drake Baldwin officially makes the roster
Top prospect Drake Baldwin has been impressive in spring so far, hitting .286 with a .748 OPS and drawing seven walks to only three strikeouts.
That hard work has officially paid off.
The Braves selected the contracts of Baldwin and relievers Hèctor Neris and Enyel De Los Santos on Friday, meaning that the trio are officially all breaking camp with the team for Opening Day (barring some last-minute signing, which could happen as opt-outs hit across the league this weekend.)
We discussed Baldwin on this week’s “Meet a Prospect” entry, found here:
An interesting note in Mark Bowman’s story on Baldwin making the roster broached the idea that the young backstop might actually stick on the roster even after Sean Murphy returns from his rib injury. Bowman relays that the organization thinks that the catcher “could benefit from being around big league pitchers, who could help improve his game-calling skills.” If that happens, it’d be at odds with Alex Anthopoulos’s stated belief of letting young catchers play as much as possible in AAA versus riding the MLB bench so they can continue developing.
Braves make a minor trade for a promising arm
The Braves completed a trade on Friday, acquiring minor league pitcher Nathan Wiles from the Tampa Bay Rays for cash considerations. As Wiles wasn’t on the 40-man roster, Atlanta doesn’t need to create a spot for him right now. He’ll be assigned to Triple-A Gwinnett.
Wiles was an 8th-rounder in 2019 out of Oklahoma. He’s both started and worked out of the pen in the Rays organization, making 100 career appearances with 63 of them being starts. A career 4.98 ERA in the minors might not be impressive, but he’s shown exceptional control in his career so far, sporting a 1.9 BB/9. He had a 7.11 ERA this spring, albeit it in a small sample of 6.1 innings. He walked just two while striking out eleven in those 6.1 innings.
From what I can find from spring, Wiles has a mid-90s fastball and backs that up with a low-90s cutter and both a changeup and a slider in the low-80s. It’s notable growth in his velo - my AAA Statcast dashboard has his fastball averaging just 91.8 last season for the Durham Bulls.
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Minor league injured list placements
Now that minor league camp is in full swing, teams are beginning to make their transactions. Nine different players were put on the minor league’s 60-day injured list by Braves affiliates this week:
Gwinnett: Royber Salinas, Ray Kerr
Columbus: Darius Vines
Rome: Owen Murphy, Cade Kuehler
Augusta: Carter Holton
FCL: Derek Vartanian, Styven Paez, Cristobal Abreu
Some of these injuries were known, while some are new. Salinas is recovering from shoulder surgery, while the group of Kerr, Murphy, Kuehler, and Holton are all rehabbing from Tommy John. I have no idea about Vines or the trio of FCL guys, although Vines was reportedly seen throwing on a backfield about a week ago.
Are more opt-outs coming this week?
Catcher Curt Casali and lefty reliever Jake Diekman were both released by the team this week after being told they were not making the Opening Day roster. There are a few more veterans who spent time in Braves camp that can join them, most notably Buck Farmer.
Famer didn’t pitch that well in spring, allowing four earned runs on eight hits in his 5.2 innings. While his strikeout total of eight is impressive, it came with four walks and a homer allowed. Despite the pedestrian performances, he’ll undoubtedly latch on somewhere if he chooses to opt out.
Should Farmer want to opt-out, he’s required to deliver his written request to the team by noon Eastern today, starting a 48-hour clock to either add him to the 40-man roster or release him.
While Farmer’s the only XX(B) free agent remaining in the organization - Casali and Diekman were also released, while Neris was put on the 40-man roster - some players may have negotiated opt-outs in their deals as well. I’d imagine the veteran free agents from this week, James McCann, Alex Verdugo, and Craig Kimbrel, all have opt-out dates in their deals. They’ve all consented to being placed in Gwinnett to start the season, but they may have the opportunity to walk later in the year.
Other players I’m watching for if they opt-out as possible adds on minor league deals: INF/OF Garrett Hampson, currently in camp with the Diamondbacks, and RHP Shintaro Fujinami, in camp with the Mariners.
Kimbrel, et al, took an assignment to Gwinnett. They have major league salaries of 1.5 to 2,000,000. My question is how much do they get paid while they’re in Gwinnett? Also, can you pay a minor league player anything you want? So that if you had Alex Verdugo and you wanted him for depth, could you pay him 1.5 million to stay in Gwinnett just in case? With that affect your luxury tax. How does that work?